Pay It Forward to be a Better Entrepreneur

The blog post below does a great job explaining how paying it forward is such a valuable trait for entrepreneurs. Many call it karma. It’s definitely not easy. It takes time and can be frustrating when recipients of help/advice/guidance are not thankful or respectful. But overall it pays for itself many times over as this post explains.

Joey Flores, the author, correctly states that an astonishing array of people are willing to be helpful. He also mentions though, that this is not universally true,

I’ll also take a moment to say that there have been a lot of people who didn’t help, or say they’re going to help and then don’t, and I don’t want to be one of those people. (Seriously, if there is anything worse than being unhelpful, it’s saying you’ll help and then not doing it.)

Unfortunately I’ve encountered a lot of that lately, especially those who promise help and then fail to deliver. I use this as motivation to be better at helping people and following through on any help that I promise.

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank all the great people that have helped me over time and given of their time to give advice, their reputations to make introductions and their good will in general. If I haven’t said so directly enough – Thank You from the bottom of my heart. I aim to pay it forward as well as I am able.

For over 13 years I have been working at startup companies, and yet had no idea what it really meant to work at a “startup” until about 4 years ago. I think the reason for that can best be explained by leaning on Steve Blank’s definition of a startup, which is “an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.